document.writeln("<a href=\"http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/kidehen@openlinksw.com/blog/?id=1424\" target=\"_blank\">Crunchbase & Semantic Web Interview (Remix - Update 1)</a><br />");
document.writeln("<i>by Kingsley Uyi Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com></i><br />");
document.writeln("<i>27 Aug 2008 at 6:16pm</i><br />");
document.writeln("<p>After reading Bengee&#39;s interview with CrunchBase, I decided to knock up a quick interview remix as part of my usual attempt to add to the developing discourse.</p>");
document.writeln("CrunchBase: When we released the CrunchBase API, you were one of the first developers to step up and quickly released a CrunchBase Sponger Cartridge. Can you explain what a CrunchBase Sponger Cartridge is?");
document.writeln("Me: A Sponger Cartridge is a data access driver for Web Resources that plugs into our Virtuoso Universal Server (DBMS and Linked Data Web Server combo amongst other things). It uses the internal structure of a resource and/or a web service associated with a resource, to materialize an RDF based Linked Data graph that essentially describes the resource via its properties (Attributes &amp; Relationships).");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: And what inspired you to create it?");
document.writeln("Me: Bengee built a new space with your data, and we&#39;ve built a space on the fly from your data which still resides in your domain. Either solution extols the virtues of Linked Data i.e. the ability to explore relationships across data items with high degrees of serendipity (also colloquially known as: following-your-nose pattern in Semantic Web circles).");
document.writeln("Bengee posted a notice to the Linking Open Data Community&#39;s public mailing list announcing his effort. Bearing in mind the fact that we&#39;ve been using middleware to mesh the realms of Web 2.0 and the Linked Data Web for a while, it was a no-brainer to knock something up based on the conceptual similarities between Wikicompany and CrunchBase. In a sense, a quadrant of orthogonality is what immediately came to mind re. Wikicompany, CrunchBase, Bengee&#39;s RDFization efforts, and ours.");
document.writeln("Bengee created an RDF based Linked Data warehouse based on the data exposed by your API, which is exposed via the Semantic CrunchBase data space. In our case we&#39;ve taken the &quot;RDFization on the fly&quot; approach which produces a transient Linked Data View of the CrunchBase data exposed by your APIs. Our approach is in line with our world view: all resources on the Web are data sources, and the Linked Data Web is about incorporating HTTP into the  naming scheme of these data sources so that the conventional URL based hyperlinking mechanism can be used to access a structured description of a resource, which is then transmitted using a range negotiable representation formats. In addition, based on the fact that we house and publish a lot of Linked Data on the Web (e.g. DBpedia, PingTheSemanticWeb, and others), we&#39;ve also automatically meshed Crunchbase data with related data in DBpedia and Wikicompany data.");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: Do you know of any apps that are using CrunchBase Cartridge to enhance their functionality?");
document.writeln("Me: Yes, the OpenLink Data Explorer which provides CrunchBase site visitors with the option to explore the Linked Data in the CrunchBase data space. It also allows them to &quot;Mesh&quot; (rather than &quot;Mash&quot;) CrunchBase data with other Linked Data sources on the Web without writing a single line of code.");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: You have been immersed in the Semantic Web movement for a while now. How did you first get interested in the Semantic Web?");
document.writeln("Me: We saw the Semantic Web as a vehicle for standardizing conceptual views of heterogeneous data sources via context lenses (URIs). In 1998 as part of our strategy to expand our business beyond the development and deployment of ODBC, JDBC, and OLE-DB data providers, we decided to build a Virtual Database Engine (see: Virtuoso History), and in doing so we sought a standards based mechanism for the conceptual output of the data virtualization effort. As of the time of the seminal unveiling of the Semantic Web in 1998 we were clear about two things, in relation to the effects of the Web and Internet data management infrastructure inflections: 1) Existing DBMS technology had reached it limits 2) Web Servers would ultimately hit their functional limits. These fundamental realities compelled us to develop Virtuoso with an eye to leveraging the Semantic Web as a vehicle from completing its technical roadmap.");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: Can you put into layman?s terms exactly what RDF and SPARQL are and why they are important? Do they only matter for developers or will they extend past developers at some point and be used by website visitors as well?");
document.writeln("Me: RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a Graph based Data Model that facilitates resource description using the Subject, Predicate, and Object principle. Associated with the core data model, as part of the overall framework,  are a number of markup languages for expressing your descriptions (just as you express presentation markup semantics in HTML or document structure semantics in XML) that include: RDFa (simple extension of HTML markup for embedding descriptions of things in a page), N3 (a human friendly markup for describing resources), RDF/XML (a machine friendly markup for describing resources).");
document.writeln("SPARQL is the query language associated with the RDF Data Model, just as SQL is a query language associated with the Relational Database Model. Thus, when you have RDF based structured and linked data on the Web, you can query against Web using SPARQL just as you would against an Oracle/SQL Server/DB2/Informix/Ingres/MySQL/etc.. DBMS using SQL. That&#39;s it in a nutshell.");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: On your website you wrote that ?RDF and SPARQL as productivity boosters in everyday web development?. Can you elaborate on why you believe that to be true?");
document.writeln("Me: I think the ability to discern a formal description of anything via its discrete properties is of immense value re. productivity, especially when the capability in question results in a graph of Linked Data that isn&#39;t confined to a specific host operating system, database engine, application or service, programming language, or development framework. RDF Linked Data is about infrastructure for the true materialization of the &quot;Information at Your Fingertips&quot; vision of yore. Even though it&#39;s taken the emergence of RDF Linked Data to make the aforementioned vision tractable, the comprehension of the vision&#39;s intrinsic value have been clear for a very long time. Most organizations and/or individuals are quite familiar with the adage: Knowledge is Power, well there isn&#39;t any knowledge without accessible Information, and there isn&#39;t any accessible Information without accessible Data. The Web has always be grounded in accessibility to data (albeit via compound container documents called Web Pages). Bottom line, RDF based Linked Data is about Open Data access by reference using URIs (HTTP based Entity IDs / Data Object IDs / Data Source Names), and as I said earlier, the intrinsic value is pretty obvious bearing in mind the costs associated with integrating disparate and heterogeneous data sources -- across intranets, extranets, and the Internet.");
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document.writeln("CrunchBase: In his definition of Web 3.0, Nova Spivack proposes that the Semantic Web, or Semantic Web technologies, will be force behind much of the innovation that will occur during Web 3.0. Do you agree with Nova Spivack? What role, if any, do you feel the Semantic Web will play in Web 3.0?");
document.writeln("Me: I agree with Nova. But I see Web 3.0 as a phase within the Semantic Web innovation continuum. Web 3.0 exists because Web 2.0 exists. Both of these Web versions express usage and technology focus patterns. Web 2.0 is about the use of Open Source technologies to fashion Web Services that are ultimately used to drive proprietary Software as Service (SaaS) style solutions. Web 3.0 is about the use of &quot;Smart Data Access&quot; to fashion a new generation of Linked Data aware Web Services and solutions that exploit the federated nature of the Web to maximum effect; proprietary branding will simply be conveyed via quality of data (cleanliness, context fidelity, and comprehension of privacy) exposed by URIs.");
document.writeln("<p>Here are some examples of the CrunchBase Linked Data Space, as projected via our CruncBase Sponger  Cartridge:</p>");
document.writeln("Amazon.com");
document.writeln("Microsoft");
document.writeln("Google");
document.writeln("Apple<br />");
document.writeln("<a href=\"http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/kidehen@openlinksw.com/blog/\" target=\"_blank\">Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space</a><br />");
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document.writeln("<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/376251024/seven-things-that-reality-could-borrow-from-the-internet\" target=\"_blank\">Seven Things That Reality Could Borrow From The Internet</a><br />");
document.writeln("<i>by Jane Copland</i><br />");
document.writeln("<i>27 Aug 2008 at 6:49am</i><br />");
document.writeln("<p>Posted by Jane Copland</p>The Internet, as fragile, infuriating and enigmatic as its features can be, certainly does some things that I'd really like to see implemented, at least for beta testing, in real life. I am not a programmer, so this is piecemealed together from things I do know... but in my ideal world, I'd be able to solve most of my problems with a couple of simple instructions and a hard refresh.<br />");
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document.writeln("1.&nbsp; Redirecting phone numbers. When I moved to Seattle (two years ago last Saturday), I acquired a local number. In the days before Facebook became microchipped into everyone's forehead, I had little means of getting in touch with everyone I knew and letting them know that my number had changed.<br />");
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document.writeln("I would like to take the hassle out of changing my phone number. I should be able to text my service provider with this:<br />");
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document.writeln("<font class=\"defaultfont\"> </font> <font face=\"Courier New\" size=\"2\"> Redirect 301 3456 1-206-555-2387</font> <br />");
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document.writeln("This would be far more convenient than trying to email everyone in my phone book. <br />");
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document.writeln("Additionally, upon receiving a new number, it came to my attention that the number was only one digit different to that of a large parking garage in Seattle. No, I cannot help you get your car out of the Union Square garage at seven a.m. on Sunday morning.<font class=\"defaultfont\"><br />");
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document.writeln("2.&nbsp; To deal with the people who'd abandoned their cars in the garage whilst out drinking in Seattle, I'd like to text in:<br />");
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document.writeln("</font> <font face=\"Courier New\" size=\"2\">if ($question==&quot;parking garage&quot;)<br />");
document.writeln("echo &quot;Your car has been impounded.&quot;; <br />");
document.writeln("else<br />");
document.writeln("echo &quot;Hello.&quot;;<br />");
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document.writeln("</font>3.&nbsp; Another thing I found infuriating upon moving to the U.S. was your addresses. In New Zealand, we have addresses like:<br />");
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document.writeln("23 Smith Street<br />");
document.writeln("Wadestown<br />");
document.writeln("Wellington<br />");
document.writeln("New Zealand<br />");
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document.writeln("I shall not entertain the idea that New Zealand may have, in the time I have been away, instigated postal codes. Here, and in various other countries too cool for simple addresses, you've made things far too complicated. In the United States, they number street addresses like it's a contest to count to one-million. I've not lived at a street address below 1000 since I came here. And Britain: what is with those postal codes? EC1M 5UJ? W2 1JU?<br />");
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document.writeln("I would like to be able to rewrite a complicated address, sending this on a postcard to the post office:<br />");
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document.writeln("<font face=\"Courier New\" size=\"2\">RewriteEngine on<br />");
document.writeln("RewriteRule ^30 Brown Street Seattle $</font><font face=\"Courier New\" size=\"2\">ComplicatedAddressLongPostalCode<br />");
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document.writeln("</font>4.&nbsp; Real life should also be programmed such that I don't waste my time trying to get into bars and clubs that I'm not going to be allowed into. It's just a risk you take when you're underage: you can guarantee that some bars in some towns either aren't going to ask to see identification, or they'll let you're in because you're a female and you're wearing lots of make-up. But most won't.<br />");
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document.writeln("A simple system of cue cards would save us all a lot of time. A bar that will definitely ask you for ID posts a 401 on their doors. Those that will also not fall for fake IDs should make it clear with a 403. A simple 502 indicates that the bar is at capacity.<br />");
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document.writeln("5.&nbsp; Unplugging and re-plugging-in anything that doesn't work properly should immediately result in it working again.<br />");
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document.writeln("6.&nbsp; I would like to be able to establish a secure connection to my pizza delivery place. Encrypting the information that I send to the person on the phone at Palermo's would make me feel a bit better when they repeat both my name and my credit card number aloud in the store whilst taking my order. Fantastic work, telephone guy. Now everyone knows all my basic financial details, including my card's expiration date and my middle initials and my address.<br />");
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document.writeln("7.&nbsp; Given how many friends I have living in different time zones, it would be useful to employ IP delivery on my mobile phone. If someone calls my phone from Australia or New Zealand, they're delivered the me who knows how to pronounce words like &quot;g'day&quot; and who says &quot;eh&quot; instead of &quot;huh.&quot; When my grandmother calls, I can serve up the version that passes all the Safe Search requirements. Americans are served a Jane who says &quot;soccer&quot; instead of &quot;football.&quot; Without such a feature, speaking the correct version of English at the correct time is far too difficult.<br />");
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document.writeln("If someone would get onto that, I'd appreciate it. Especially the bit about cleaning up my language around my grandmother.<br /><p>Do you like this post? Yes No </p><br />");
document.writeln("<a href=\"http://www.seomoz.org/blog\" target=\"_blank\">SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog</a><br />");
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